Will the god of football come down to earth with a bump as Argentina coach?

Diego Maradona: soon to be the new coach of Argentina. Photograph: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images

"With Maradona on board, Argentina's national football squad is like the Beatles," footballer turned businessman Guillermo Tofoni said last week. Tofoni's company WorldEleven markets Argentina's international friendlies and his comment about the famous Liverpool band was said in the context of how much Maradona's presence brings in terms of publicity when he travels with the squad.

Today, the question on many an Argentine mind is whether the Beatles analogy reflects the rationale behind long-serving Argentine FA president Julio Grondona's shocking decision to appoint Diego Maradona manager of Argentina.

"Let's not jump the gun," Maradona told Radio Mitre a few hours ago. "We've had a first meeting and Grondona's proposal really seduces me. But we still need to talk some more." But the headlines around the world have already been written, the news has broken and we have a story.

Maradona has made no secret of his desire to remain linked with the national strip, and since Alfio Basile quit the job a fortnight ago there has been much speculation about who would replace him. In spite of Maradona's impressive and forceful campaign, conducted mostly through the media, the people's choice seemed to be Carlos Bianchi. Yet Bianchi's long-standing personality clash with Grondona seems to have been unsurmountable. By contrast, Carlos Bilardo, the manager who led Argentina to two World Cup finals in 1986 and 1990 - with spectacularly good results in the former and one of the ugliest football displays in the country's history in the latter - appears to have been able to overcome his long-standing personal feud with Grondona. In the proposed management scheme, Bilardo would be a crucial part of the committee that Maradona would front.

"It's a birthday gift I don't wish to unwrap until Thursday," Maradona says. He turns 48 on October 30 and the appointment is expected to be formally announced tomorrow. "We're journalists, we don't ask questions," one hack told me off the record before going on to explain how the committee is expected to look: Maradona at the helm ("I am the one who will chose the team") with Bilardo in a semi-director of football capacity. Pedro Troglio, currently managing at club level in Paraguayand an ex-team-mate of Maradona's, would also be involved, as would Jose Luis Brown and 'El Negro' Enrique, both players from the 1986 World Cup-winning squad. Fernando Signorini, who worked for many years with Cesar Menotti and has been close to Maradona throughout his career, could take up a role as a fitness coach.

One of the most popular chants for Argentina fans is: "We will once again be the champions, just like in 86." Could this be the way forward? A handful of players, the same manager, and Maradona in charge? The reaction of the Argentine press has been one of incredulity. "Bianchi would have been a more serious appointment," one vox-popped fan said. Journalists echoed the sentiment. "It's not so much weird as absurd and shameful," one told me. "My theory is that Grondona actually doesn't want Argentina to win the World Cup," another said.

Most negative statements were uttered in the traditional off-the-record premise, while the media analysed where they stood in terms of towing editorial lines. But Daniel Arcucci, of La Nacion, was happy to be quoted: "The risk is the destruction of the myth - how will someone so close to being a deity handle such an earthly task?"

The negative reaction mostly stems from Maradona's turbulent off-the-pitch track record. Notoriously unreliable, lacking in discipline, and with an innate contempt for established rules and corporate status quo, will he be able to impose order and focus among the players who could form one of the best squads in the world?

I suspect he could. To footballers more than anyone else, Maradona is inspiring. His respect for the game and the craft of playing is contagious, and among the current squad there are players such as Juan Román Riquelme and Carlos Tevez who have been close to him professionally. The younger superstars - Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero, soon to father Maradona's first grandchild - will be in awe of him and hungry to learn.

Let us not forget that Maradona's impact on those near him is immense. When he turned up to play in a charity match organised by Robbie Williams, Marcel Desailly was reported to have sat down and whispered: "If Diego says something to me, I'll wet myself." Alastair Campbell wrote an epic feature about their encounter in which he - Campbell - came across as humbled. Commanding the respect of the players is not going to be the problem.

"He is going through his best moment of the last decade, without a doubt," Arcucci continued. "Healthwise but also in terms of stability. Of course, with him, you never know how long it will last." Juan Pablo Mendes, from Ole sports daily, shared a meal with Maradona and several other journalists in Bolivia earlier this year following a match in support of President Evo Morales. "He was mentally and physically better than he has ever been," Mendes told me. "The question is whether he will be able to sustain the pressures of a job like this one."

During this summer's Olympics, Maradona had a presence among the squad, invited in by manager Sergio Batista, another 1986 team-mate and old friend. In this informal way, by just being around and chatting and encouraging the players, it seems Maradona transmitted positives to the squad. But his formal track record as manager - short stints at Mandiyu de Corrientes and Racing de Avellaneda; about a dozen matches with each club and a total of three wins - leaves a lot to be desired.

Is a great player necessarily a great manager? Is the art of football management, to quote a friend from these pages, more alchemy than pure chemistry? Maradona could be the greatest alchemist of them all: why not believe in magic?

The reality has potentially terrifying consequences because until Grondona makes a statement of intent we are left wondering what the motivations behind this appointment are. If it is the idea that global marketing and scattering breadcrumbs for the seagull world press is good business, then football may suffer. As Diego Latorre, a forgotten hero who now pundits, put it to Tofoni when the Beatles analogy was uttered: "The problem with marketing is that it's got to stop when the match starts." Until the whistle blows for kick-off, everything else will be conjecture.